


Wordsmith

by shrikethrush



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25574254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrikethrush/pseuds/shrikethrush
Summary: Zoe and her brother have a complicated relationship.  It's messy, and it hurts, and when he's gone Zoe is left looking back on what was and what could have been.
Relationships: Connor Murphy & Zoe Murphy
Kudos: 17





	Wordsmith

“I would write poetry and prose

if I could string together the words – 

but I find the words and I lose the words

and the words get caught and the words come loose

and the words fall out and the words disappear

and I can’t help but wonder if the words were ever here –”

Zoe scribbled out the bit she’d just written, biting her bottom lip as she held her ukulele in her lap loosely. Something about this sounded  _ wrong –  _ maybe it was the fact that her words were falling short, maybe it was the fact that three of the five tunes she’d tried had, in fact, been other songs that had already been written. 

“Fuck! Fuck  _ fucking _ damn fuck!” She put her uke on her bed, stomping around her room in frustration as she felt the frustration burn behind her eyes and blaze through her mind, the shapeless and formless words that she knew but didn’t yet  _ know  _ filling her with a rage as fathomless and inexplicable as the depths of the internet. “Fuck the  _ fucking _ words I can’t fucking write because they suck! They suck ass! They suck  _ the most ass!”  _

There was a loud thump on the door. “Quiet down, nobody gives a damn!” It was her asshole brother, back at it again. Her parents had gone out for a date night, so they weren’t here to tell them to stop fighting because they ‘need to get along!’ 

Screw  _ that. _

“Fuck you!” Zoe yelled through the door before she could stop herself. She was  _ frustrated  _ and she was  _ mad  _ and she was seeing  _ redredred  _ because she was tired and she just wanted to let everything out at once and she didn’t know where, because it’s not like she could talk to her friends and like  _ hell  _ her parents would listen, they’re too busy with Connor. 

“Fuck you, too!” Connor pounded on the door, and she could almost see it on the other side, the red face and the anger and the frustration all pooling together. It filled her with an almost vindictive glee – she was out of control, sure, she was  _ mad,  _ but look! Even on her own, she was holding it together better than  _ Connor.  _

Connor, who she didn’t know and who didn’t know her, not really. 

His words didn’t matter to her – they all blended together in her mind as she put on her headphones, done with writing music for the night. Now she’d listen to music – loud and angry and out of control, and she’d stew in it. She’d bask in being the right kind of wreck, because at least  _ she  _ was a fender-bender that only left the car with a couple of dents, at least she wasn’t a head-on collision. 

***

“You  _ like  _ somebody,” Zoe teased, drawing out the word ‘like’ as if she were some kindergartener talking to someone about their first crush. She waved a piece of lined paper overhead like it was a flag on the Fourth of July, and Connor snatched it away just as quickly. 

“What the hell are you doing with one of my poems?” He scrunched his nose up all angry, and it vaguely reminded Zoe of when they were little kids and he’d eat something he didn’t like, or when he would rant to her about how angry Mom and Dad had made him. He stopped doing that when he got to high school and realized that he didn’t like  _ her  _ anymore either, and the expression forced out a bit of laughter that Zoe hadn’t even realized had built up in her chest. 

“You left it on the counter when you left your room last night for some midnight ice cream. Don’t worry, I grabbed it before Mom or Dad could see it this morning at breakfast, but really, you gotta be  _ head  _ over heels for this guy –” Zoe remembered back when she and Connor had been so close that she’d been the first one she told about that “– I mean, ‘I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you forever’? He’s gotta be something special to have gotten  _ your  _ attention this much.” 

“It’s none of  _ your  _ business,” Connor sneered. 

“‘I circle in your orbit like a binary star,’ I mean this is a  _ goldmine,  _ Connor! Seriously, though...if you wanna talk about guys or something, I’m here for you, yeah? Or maybe sometime you and I could like, write a song together – I’ll do the melody, you can do the lyrics, just like when we were kids?” 

A ghost of a smile crossed Zoe’s face, and for a moment Connor paused, like he was really thinking about it. 

But then he folded the poem up in a huff and walked away without saying anything at all. 

***

It was late at night – Zoe had climbed out her window onto the little chunk of roof just outside because she wanted a better view of the stars. She had her ukulele with her, and this time she wasn’t trying to fit words to it – she was just writing music, letting the notes fit together and flow in that weird, funky way they tended to. 

Her fingers slipped and the next chord sounded too sharp – she hissed at it, this time not going for the loud-stomping-and-cursing kind of rage. She played a couple more chords, all of them wrong and none of them fitting together and she let the swirling, curling thing in her stomach take the wheel for a moment. 

“I hate this house I hate this place

I wish I could go to outer space

and meet the aliens who’re just like me. 

I’d make new friends like super soon

when I’m out there on the moon

with my brand new moon-family!” 

A window opened, and someone joined next to her – it was Connor, with his cracked nail polish and cracked voice, and as off key and awful as he sounded, it was  _ really nice  _ when he opened his mouth and joined in her rage filled discord. 

“Out there nobody will hear me scream

when I’m filled with anger to the seams –

and wanna throw it all away. 

So I’ll fly and fly and go real far

and orbit ‘round some other star

and maybe out there things'll be okay!” 

“And maybe someday the  _ sun will die –” _

“But at least I know it’ll be you and I –”

“And we’ll laugh and laugh and Pluto will be there too.” 

“So when the world decides to  _ fucking explode –” _

“You and I can hit the road –”

“And find ourselves in the sky that’s big and blue!” 

Connor was actually sitting beside Zoe now, and it was...nice. They were actually doing something other than yelling and fighting with each other. That  _ never  _ happened anymore. 

“That’s an absolute banger of a song, we gotta get a recording and send it to some record labels,” Connor snorted. 

“We should make a band, call it Murphy’s Law and watch it devolve into chaos,” Zoe agreed. “I’ll play the guitar, you can sing, and we can team up on songwriting. It’ll be super successful, we’ll have to  _ regretfully  _ drop out of high school in order to go on tour.” 

“I’ll have to tell Mrs. Luxiel about how sad I am to leave her English class, I’m  _ so deeply sorry  _ I couldn’t finish that  _ wonderful  _ paper on the parallels between Luka and Polly, I’ll just need to take the outline you said that I  _ need  _ to write for it to be a successful essay and shove it up your ass instead.” 

Zoe stifled a giggle. “She sounds like a real delight.” 

“Truly the  _ best  _ English teacher ever. I’m thrilled that I get to have her for my last year of schooling.” 

“You’re not gonna go to college?” Zoe asked. 

“...nah. Not really in the cards. Hey, Zo, you know I love you, yeah?” 

“Yeah. I love you too, you big asshole.” 

“Fuck you,” Connor punched her arm lightly. 

“Fuck you too,” Zoe snorted. “I’m heading in. See you tomorrow morning, yeah? And tomorrow, for the love of all that is good,  _ please _ don’t finish the milk.” 

***

It was a long time later – a lot of grief, a lot of lies, a whirlwind romance – that Zoe had found herself back on that roof. She had a ukulele in her lap, not that she was playing it. Her attention was elsewhere – she had letters clutched to her chest, letters that were never  _ real  _ about a brother who probably had never really loved her anyway – and she wondered. 

Wondered who that guy was that Connor had been in love with that hadn’t been enough of a reason to stay. 

Wondered if maybe she’d reached out just a  _ little more  _ if she could’ve been that person for him, if they could’ve been there for each other the way they were when they were kids, if she’d been able to find the words if she could’ve maybe helped mend the rift enough that he could get to someone who could help him seal it. 

Above all else she stung. She stung for the brother who she hated and hated her, for the boy that she had loved that she thought her brother had maybe loved too, for the reminder that maybe her brother didn’t love her, that maybe he hadn’t wanted to fix things and had said those things that last night out of...what, regret? A broken sense of responsibility? Or maybe as a final ‘fuck you’ to make her feel extra shitty about the fact that he was gone? 

Maybe if she’d said something differently that night...if she could’ve just  _ found the words,  _ if she could just have told him how much she loved him, things would’ve been different. 

But she hadn’t, and she couldn’t, and maybe that’s why she let herself believe a  _ stupid _ little lie that she realized now was incredibly suspect from the very beginning. 

She once again let the swirling, curling thing in her stomach take the wheel. 

This time she didn’t sing – she couldn’t. 

This time she cried. Cried for what was, and what could have been. 


End file.
